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GMO to me stands for God Move Over! How do you explain gmos to a person who believes what the Bible says about NOT mixing two kinds (plant & animal; two different plants; two different animals) together. In Leviticus 19:19 it says "Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed:...." GMO's are MINGLED/MIXED seed - mingled with plant (i.e. corn/soy/cotton gene) and animal (i.e. bacteria/spider/fish gene etc..) et al. Because of THIS is will not eat them or any foods that contain them. How do you justify this? What answer can you give me to change my mind regarding the fact that gmos BREAK God's holy LAW which means if I eat them I will be committing SIN!? What's your "answer" to this?

Question Submitted By: Debra from Houston, TX ** Questions submitted to GMO Answers appear as written at the time of submission.
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The Leviticus account contains a range of directions about diet, clothing and lifestyle. Many Christians and Jews see these instructions as being directly relevant for the children of Israel at the time of that dispensation. These instructions focus on the need for separation and distinctiveness from the surrounding tribes of the time, rather than being instructions for all times and all situations. It is interesting to note that people who eat bread today are eating genetically hybrid grain that has progressively been domesticated by primitive agriculturalists and plant breeders over thousands of years.

Modern genetic analysis has revealed that one original parent of wheat was Triticum monococcum which is a wild, large-grained grass related to today’s einkorn. The other parent was probably Triticum speltoides, which is related to today’s spelt wheat. About 10,000 years ago, these two parents combined to produce a hybrid variety, and this tetraploid line eventually gave rise to emmer, which, through further domestication, gave rise to the durum wheats that are the basis of pasta and couscous today.

Bread wheat originated from a further hybridization when emmer was crossed with another wild-grass species, Triticum tauschi, probably in north west Turkey or Iran. The result was the hexaploidTriticum aestivum, which contains three pairs of chromosomes instead of the usual one. Thus, bread wheat was developed (unwittingly) by farmers who simply selected the best corn from one harvest and used it as the seed corn for the next crop. This example illustrates the fact that few, if any, of our food crops are the original wild or “natural” plant species, because humankind has domesticated agricultural crops by selecting and crossing species for thousands of years to improve production and yield. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see all plant breeding as a form of “genetic engineering,” and without it, we never would have survived.

Interestingly, the region of Mesopotamia (between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates) was the “cradle of civilization” that gave birth to the three great monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. This region is also known as the “fertile crescent,” in which many of our major crop plants were first developed through agriculture and plant breeding. God's grace has provided human agriculturalists and geneticists with skills to use for the benefit of others. However, as in the time of Leviticus, we must always try to combine technical knowledge with ethical wisdom in order to achieve beneficial outcomes in an ever-changing world.

Emeritus Fellow, John Innes Center, Norwich, UK, and Honorary Professor, University of East Anglia

Nick Brewin is an Emeritus Fellow at the John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK and an Honorary Professor at the University of East Anglia. He graduated from Cambridge University with a PhD in biochemistry and plant cell biology. From 1976 – 2005 he was a research leader at the John Innes Centre, studying the legume-Rhizobium root nodule symbiosis, evolution and agriculture.